Fifteen years ago, the hegira to the East Side had not gotten under way. Playboys, head salesmen, mobsters, visiting firemen—all fast with a buck—nightly made happy the hearts of headwaiters.
c.—From the Circle to the Square
Though what the world calls "Broadway" is not a street, but a condition, the purpose of these few pages is to tell you about the thoroughfare named Broadway, and more specifically, that part of it now the Rialto of the western world.
This meandering bit of avenue, following the tortuous curve of an ancient cow path, is delimited south of 42nd Street by the flourishing wholesale garment industry; and, north of Columbus Circle, by Central Park and automobile row, some of which extends south of the Circle, encroaching into the White Way as far as 54th Street. So, all the Glittering Gash can honestly claim for its own is 12 short blocks, measuring exactly three-fifths of a mile.
This is the street of a million lights, of a broken heart for every bulb, and more bulbs every night.
This is Gotham's Main Drag; strangely, save for the milling crowds and the blinding Mazdas, it has not now and has not had for the past decade those features which are universally supposed by all the people "in the know" all over the world, except in New York, to be on Broadway.
At this writing, on the whole "street," there are but two theatres permanently devoted to the legitimate stage.
But there are more than 30 legitimate theatres in New York. All, except the aforementioned and a handful on parallel avenues, are located east and west of Broadway, in narrow side streets in the 40's and 50's.
Of about 1,500 licensed cabarets in New York, there are at this writing but four with entrances on the Stem.
If, from seeing the film of that name, you thought 42nd Street—where it crosses Broadway—is the center of Manhattan's mad gaiety, you have much to learn.